Loving Something Without Knowing Every Detail

 Today's blog post will be a bit personal -and long-. I am writing this post both to get rid of this "fear" and to encourage people who may think like me. 

Every person has a special interest, something they are curious about and enjoy looking at and loving it. For some it is drawing, for others it is mythology, for others it is cars. Most of the time, because we don't know "everything" about these passions, we hesitate to open up and talk about them with people. At least I was like that.

I decided that this has to change and I am changing it. It wasn't a short journey; I didn't decide overnight (it can be decided, but because of my tidal character, this process was painful). I told myself that by hiding these passions, that I will only harm myself, I will not be able to embrace the things I love or even discuss a thing or two about them because of what people will say or think. It cannot go on like this, and it won't. Not anymore.

I am not going to enumerate every passion, every interest of mine here; it would take too long and I already plan to show this in the future by writing various blog posts. But I believe can explain my biggest passion: Cars. From a young age there was something that attracted me to racing and cars in general. I wanted Barbie dolls (I still love Barbie dolls, I'm not a person who declared war on their feminine side) as well as toy cars, and if I had to choose between the two, I would choose the cars. In fact, one of my first birthday presents (I was one or two years old) was a green Porsche toy car that my aunt bought me. Until I met the internet that connected the whole world together, my interest in cars was limited to toys and cars that I've seen on the street.

The year is 2005, winter. My dad is playing a game on the computer and I go over to watch him. On the tube monitor someone is saying something in a language I don't understand (English 💀), there are fancy cars around, the air is sepia and cloudy. This atmosphere attracted the attention of this little five year old girl and she started observing it, mesmerized. Yes, this was my introduction to the Need For Speed series. It was MW'05 that introduced me to the concept of street racing for the first time; the first time I heard alternative rock and metal music, the first time I learned the word "modification". I don't remember much about this period except for a few core memories (I was five years old, dude).

But in the following years, NFSMW stayed installed on my dad's computer for a year or two. One of the reasons was that my dad didn't like racing games *that* much, he was into other games (you know 2006-2007 was one of the periods when Tomb Raider was on the rise again) and NFSMW would sit quietly in the corner and we would glance at each other before I opened Explorer to enter Oyunlar1Oyun or Kraloyun (Turkish flash game websites), but I couldn't dare to enter the game because I was afraid of deleting my dad's save (bruh, this is what happens when you don't know English). Then one day I couldn't wait any longer and told my dad that I wanted to play NFS and he showed me how to open a new save and thus I took my first step into the "racing world".

Credit to Memo Ov on Artstation

In fact, I used to look at my dad's save from time to time and I thought he was way ahead of the game. He had acquired Big Lou's Mitsubishi Eclipse by winning a pink slip. I thought that tiger vinyl was so cool. But turns out he was only in Blacklist #11 💀. When I'd say "Should I play in your save?" he'd say no, don't touch it, but that save stayed there at number 11 forever lmao.

  

You love someone for no reason, think about the last person you had a crush on. Why do you like them? Because. Because you like them, it's that simple. There is no explanation. That's what cars are like for me. Have I ever been to a race before? No. (some Turkish problems) Have I ever driven a race car? No. How many times have I driven a car in my life? Once. But do I love it? Yes, and madly. 

Me as a mechanic at most.

Ask me, "Show me this part of the car," I can't. "Tell me to fix it, I can't. Ask me anything about cars other than their general principles, I cannot answer you. But this is not an obstacle for me to love it, to feed the addiction inside me. There are factors that affect people, the biggest of which is the environment. As we always say, "geography is destiny". Actually, I hate learned helplessness, but here I'm just saying what happened in my case. I was a girl, I didn't go to a garage or a mechanic shop. There was no situation that required me to fix a car. I didn't have a car to open and tinker with, so even if I read on the internet, I couldn't keep the technical information in my mind. (and Socrates says we born knowing everything, smh) I would always listen to the conversations of my male friends in high school -or even in college- and I would think "how the hell do they know so much?" and I would be jealous on the inside. 

This obsession continued in my middle school years. Since my name was Yağmur (literally "rain" in Turkish), I always introduced myself as "Rain" in foreign forums. Then, when I met Hannibal Lecter in my middle school years (my bff lol), I adopted his last name and created my own alter ego: Rain Lecter. This alter ego was living her dreams, she was a street racer and cars were her biggest passion. Between 2012-2014 (I don't remember the exact date) when I was replaying NFSMW'05 again for steenth time, I spent a good time thinking about the alias and finally decided on "Skinny" (based on Skinnyman by Static-X. Thus, I had found my name (did someone called maladaptive daydreaming). I still use it by the way, no regrets XD.

During the peak years of my adolescence - between 2015 and 2017 - I used to memorize car models like crazy. I could tell the model by its headlight, rear frame, I knew the year, which engine it had, etc. Still, it is not possible to know every car. As an English interpreter and translator, do I know English, yes I do, but it would be stupid and difficult to jump into every field and try to translate every area. The more you divide something, the harder it is to grasp it. That's why translators choose one or two areas of specialization. Like medicine and law or literature and sports.

So, I was more interested in muscle, exotic and sports cars, and I knew more about their features. Then this passion started to eat me up from the inside.

"Why wasn't I born in the States? At least I would have had a chance to be a racing pilot." It was eating me up inside each passing day. Why this and why that, why this and not that, why why why why why... I was being sucked in an endless abyss, and when being a teenager was added to this, a constant state of hopelessness, a constant depression and stuckness dominated my soul. Like the protagonists in movies trying to escape from their past, I would always pass by one or two Mustang GTs, BMW E82s, etc. after school (I studied in Istanbul, so there was nowhere to escape from luxury cars). I used to get angry and angsty, so to speak, because I couldn't fulfill my dreams. Also, in high school, I was an introverted person who didn't talk to everyone. Since I was a girl who "didn't own her passions because she thought she didn't have enough knowledge", which is the subject of our article, I didn't talk about these things with anyone and suffocated even more deep into my own thoughts.

Then I turned my back on this passion -that I couldn't understand that I couldn't escape- by being arabesque (Turkish version of being an emo) with the motto "curse the fates". I started not looking at cars, I didn't learn about the new models, I stopped reading car blogs, I stopped listening to NFS music, I stopped playing, I stopped thinking, and one by one they all started to fade from my mind. "How many seconds did the Gallardo go from 0 to 100?" -I don't know. "How many horsepower has the Mustang GT 2015?" -I don't care. "There's a new NFS coming out." -Yeah, good. "Name me a Blacklist 15 member." -I can't. "What's a torque?" -Your mama (ok ok, just kidding).

You get the general idea: a young person disillusioned and resentful of the world. 

We'll be right back after our angsty teenager period!

When I went to the college, I decided to embrace this feeling again. I wasn't going to give up hope. "So what if I wasn't born with silver spoon in my mouth in the States? That still doesn't stop me from loving what I love. I'll do what I can in my own way." But in the meanwhile, the demons inside me were still saying, "You don't know enough, you can't talk about any of this!" 

This time my approach was more civilized. I didn't try to replace the things I'd forgotten, I didn't memorize models, I didn't look up what was torque again. I was hanging out more freely and trying to feed -and console- what was inside me by playing NFS. If the topic of cars came up, I would turn around and listen and participate, but I wouldn't say anything. Fear, fear, fear. Man's worst enemy. 

So I started to build the world of my alter ego, the foundation of which started to be laid in childhood, and I was even trying to reflect her characteristics to myself in real life. When I wanted to overcome my anxiety, I would say "Rain wouldn't be scared like that" and I would encourage myself. I don't know if it was a coping mechanism or an effort to bring  the person I wanted to be into my life by emerging it with myself; but I always tried to be "Rain Lecter". I didn't like the life and the world I was living in, and I wasn't the person I supposed to be.

Many times my inner voice told me that I was crazy and delusional, but I couldn't give up. If I let this part of me go, I wouldn't be me. I still think like that, except for the "crazy" part. I don't think I'm crazy or delusional. It's not crazy to try to be the person I can't be due to circumstances beyond my control, and to somehow bring her into my life. 

That's why I decided to talk about and share everything I love to get out of this cycle and do something I have never done before. I will not let the world inside me rot, and neither should you.

No one chose where or how they were born, but we should not let these influences distract us from what we love. You like Egyptian mythology? Tell the people, talk to them. Don't be afraid. "But I don't know how many pieces Seth cut Osiris into!" So what! What will happen? "I don't know," you'll be a little embarrassed in conversation today, but you'll look it up and find out, and you'll have made up for it, and be better for tomorrow.

Don't be afraid to argue, don't be afraid to be wrong. Do you want to die without showing your inner treasures? When will you take action? When will you embrace the parts of you that make you who you are? "I love drawing, but I can't draw like X or Y." Then don't! So what? Create a Deviantart account now and share your drawings with the world. "Writing is my great passion, but I haven't read renowned literature books and I'm afraid of being judged." So what! Aren't they are human beings too? Each to their own. Just because 100 million people have read and liked it doesn't necessarily mean you will like it too. Keep writing. 

If you "water" your talents every day like you water flowers, you will find that you draw better than yesterday, know mythology better than yesterday, speak Russian, Japanese or whatever better than yesterday.

But not if you keep quiet. It won't develop if you don't share. So I will not hesitate to share anymore. 

Be brave and take that step now.

Here's a song from Rain Lecter's universe for you. I hope it gives you hope and inspiration like it gives me too. See you in the next post!